Gadgets Inspector | Hot Gadgets and Gizmos

Wish you could watch YouTube videos on your Apple TV? Sometime in June, all Internet connected Apple TV boxes will accept a free software patch that will enable wireless streaming of YouTube videos. YouTube is making thousands of clips available each week until thier full catalog is accessible later this fall.

You’ll be able browse the YouTube content on your Apple TV in a variety of ways including: featured, top viewed, recently viewed, history, and even by search. I’m dreading the search option. If you haven’t used the Apple TV yet, there’s a USB port in the back of the device, but you currently can’t use a keyboard for some reason. Entering text on the Apple TV is the equivalent of typing in your initials for the high score screen in an arcade game. Very painful without a keyboard.

So how chewy will these compressed YouTube videos look on your HD TV? I’ve already ripped a bunch of music videos off YouTube, converted them to MPEG-4 videos and saved them in iTunes. Honestly, the Flash encoded YouTube videos look like crap on a HD TV. YouTube doesn’t even look good when stretched out to its default 480 x 360, let alone 640 x 480 or HD. But YouTube does have thousands of clips and can provide endless hours of entertainment. Fuzzy, but fun.

Apple also announced a new Apple TV model with a 160 GB hard drive for $400. You’ll still be able to buy the old 40 GB version for $300, but personally, I think $100 for 4x the storage is a great deal.

You can read more about the Apple TV here: Apple TV Review

BeSocial: digg story | methodshop

It looks like Google’s 2006 acquisition of Neven Vision, a company specializing in facial recognition software, is finally starting to pay off. Google Blogoscoped, a blog dedicated to everything related to Google, got a tip from a Google engineer that Google had secretly added some facial recognition abilities to its image search this week.

The feature remains unofficial and unannounced, but you can add a small query string to the end of your Google Image search URL to see the facial recognition software in action.

For example, do a normal Google image search for “Starbuck Battlestar” and your image results should produce images from the American SciFi TV show Battlestar Galactica. Then try adding “&imgtype=face” to the end of the URL. Your new search results will only contain photos of people and tight shots of their faces. Cool right?

Last August, Google Picasa product manager Adrian Graham had this to say about Google’s acquisition of Neven Vision in the official Google blog:

“Neven Vision comes to Google with deep technology and expertise around automatically extracting information from a photo. It could be as simple as detecting whether or not a photo contains a person, or, one day, as complex as recognizing people, places, and objects.”

BeSocial: flickr | digg story | methodshop

On Wednesday, Apple released an update to iTunes (US) that added DRM-free AAC music files to the iTunes Store. Dubbed iTunes Plus, the new version of iTunes will allow you to either download DRM (Digital Rights Management) files for the standard $0.99 or spend $1.29 on DRM-free songs.

In addition to iTunes Plus, Apple added a new section to iTunes 7.2 called iTunes U, where you can download lectures from various universities around the US free of charge. In addition to lectures, many Universities are offering language lessons, lab demonstrations, sports highlights and campus tours. Participating schools currently include Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Duke University and MIT.

It’s probably only a matter of time until someone claims that they graduated from “iTunes U.”

BeSocial: digg story | methodshop

Google has launched a new home page for Korea that departs from Google’s “classic,” minimalist home page approach. The new look features animated product buttons below the search box and will become the default home page in the country, a move Google is comfortable with given the near universal presence of broadband.

The new, animated Google Korea home page is intended to help Google better compete in the country where it seeks to gain market share.

When you roll your mouse over the colored dots, icons appear. You can see the animation on the live Google Korea page.

“It was important where our classic minimalism wasn’t working that we adapt,” Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products & User Experience at Google, said in a briefing earlier today.

BeSocial: digg story | methodshop | flickr

Wow, sometimes people are lazy. Here’s a picture of a woman pushing her baby with a Segway. Besides being lazy, isn’t that kind of dangerous anyway? Because of the way the Segway works, I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to reverse quickly or move out of the way with the stroller in case of an emergency.

Click here for a bigger image
Question of the Day: Should you need a license to drive a Segway, or a licence to be a mother?

BeSocial: flickr | digg story | methodshop

Ever wonder how your mouse connects to the cursor and moves it around your screen? Believe it or not, I found a website that explains this technical process clearly thanks to a giant digital magnifying glass.

Go to this website http://www.1-click.jp/ and then move your cursor around.

Who knew?

BeSocial: digg it | methodshop

After purchasing the remaining 40 percent of Cingular last year, AT&T has begun the process of rebranding some 1,800 Cingular stores. The telecom, which will be the sole carrier of the iPhone in the U.S., is undertaking the rebranding move just weeks before Apple’s hotly anticipated smartphone hits the market.

“Our branding Email Marketing Software - Free Demo campaign is performing at and above projected levels, and customer response has been very positive,” Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chief operating officer, said.

The San Antonio-based phone giant is accelerating its rebranding efforts of one of the best-known brands in the market, and will make the orange “Jack” logo and Cingular name disappear from new devices being sold.

The decision to move to this phase of the branding campaign is based on research that indicates that consumer awareness of AT&T — one of the best-known, most durable and iconic brands in the world — is high and ahead of expectations, the company said.

[Via technewsworld.com]

BeSocial: digg story | methodshop

Are you stuck in the past? Still listening to Debbie Gibson’s Electric Youth on cassette and trying to beat your high score on Donkey Kong? These stylish Mario Brothers and Golden Star mice I found on GetUSB.info might get you that retro mojo you need to actually do it!

Both offer a retro 8-bit appeal and feature the original mechanical mouse ball mechanism that you probably forgot existed. Push one of these beauties across your desk and imagine that you are playing Super Mario Brothers… rather than filling out those boring TPS reports.

[Via GetUSB.info]

BeSocial: digg story | methodshop

Here’s a YouTube video showing off a new Apple TV plug-in called “A Series of Tubes.” The plug-in allows you to browse YouTube videos on your Apple TV. Sure, the Flash encoded YouTube videos look like crap on a HDTV. YouTube doesn’t even look good when stretched out to its default 480 x 360, let alone 640 x 480 or HD. But YouTube does have thousands of clips and can provide endless hours of entertainment.

Not ready to start tinkering around with plug-ins for your Apple TV? You can still save videos off YouTube and convert them for your iPod/iTunes. Check out this tutorial: How to Copy Videos Off YouTube.

BeSocial: youtube | digg story | methodshop

This past Wednesday, Google unveiled a new “universal search” function that integrates text, photos, video, news, scanned books and blogs in a single list of results. The search engine will automatically check Google Video’s archive and allow users to click on a “watch video’ link that will embed the video right on the search results page.

Other video sites publishing clips or full-length versions also appear. Several companies have been working to improve video search on the net, but none with Google’s pedigree or market share.

BeSocial: digg story | methodshop